What A Reading Habit Can Do For Your Blogging Mojo

Most of the bloggers are so pre-occupied in generating content that their reading habits goes for a toss.

How many books, papers or Articles have you read in last one month?

I guess many people will say, my job is to generate content, not spending time on reading articles.

Some might say, I read the articles when I go for my link creation spree with commenting on other blogs.

Reading habit plays a very important role for bloggers and it needs to be included in your blogging schedule.

There are many benefits which you can reap with regular reading habit.

Your mind is your library of what you read – Lailah Gifty Akita

The quote above very clearly communicate why reading is an important aspect.

The ideas which gets generated in your mind, subconsciously your reading habits make a big impact on them.

Reading habits to break writer’s block

What is Writer’s Block?

The condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing

I don’t think there is any writer who has not gone through Writer’s Block. If you have not gone through it till now, trust me, there will be a time.

You will feel that you have exhausted all your ideas and there is nothing more you can write.

But if you have a habit of reading, you will be introduced to many new ideas and it can help you recover from your writer’s block.

You can take some inspiration from the other blogs or books which you are reading or just publish your learnings from the last read.

That itself is one of the idea to break the writer’s block.

Idea generation

Another benefit of reading habit is idea generation. You read through lot of topics and they might generate new ideas which can be used for your content.

This time when I was setting up my new blog, I wanted to start it as a business.

So, I have decided to use a fixed monthly budget as an investment and started looking for the options to fit into that.

I have done so much reading regarding the hosting solution, cost comparisons but the idea was to get best possible solution in cheapest cost, so I finally decided to go with WordPress installation on AWS LightSail.

But by doing that much of reading, I am able to generate a series on my blog on How to install WordPress on AWS LightSail.

I am still working on it and adding more and more useful information.

Newer way of communicating

Sometime we don’t realise that by just keep generating content, our tones have become monotonous. Most of the content which is coming out follows the same pattern and it can be boring for regular readers.

When we read multiple views or writers, we understand different tones or different way of communicating the same ideas.

Reading habits enforces freshness in our content and keep regular reader engaged.

Related topics

Most of the people like the content which they can relate with. So, it’s always a great idea to add a little story to your posts.

Reading habits gives you that content, you can find related topics in your niche and connect it with your posts.

Sometime some stories from other topics can generate insight for your niche and its learning can be implemented there.

Connections

This is another benefit from reading habits. I know many people would have told that commenting on other blogs is a nice way to make connections but without reading their content, it’s called spam.

I have had many cases where people come to my post and would not take enough time to read and understand the topic, pick a one line and post a comment around that.

Am I going to build relations with those people?

Why not spend some time to actually read the content on the other blogs, check how they are writing, what they are trying to communicate and then try to make an connection?

Don’t read the content for the sake of commenting, read to understand the idea behind the content and you will get more meaningful comments automatically.

How to build a reading habit

Now you know, how important reading habit is, for your blogging success but how do we build it?

When you started blogging, everyone would have told to practice writing. Try to keep writing daily, at least one paragraph but write something.

Reading habits are also like the same thing, you need to practice to make sure it has become a regular thing.

Like blogging, create a schedule. Take out some time and make sure you use that time for reading.

You can start with something which is of your interest and don’t be afraid to leave it, in case it turns out to be boring. It’s supposed to be a fun activity, not a punishment.

You can take some time out from your TV or internet, don’t worry – reading is also an exercise and supposed to freshen you up.

We do look for a blogging buddy so that you don’t loose the interest in blogging, why not look for a reading buddy also?

Make up a target to read minimum number of pages per day, may be 10 or 20 to start with.

Try to follow that pattern and see slowly it will become a regular habit for you.

If you have made it by this far, I would hope you would have generated some interest for reading, just keep doing it.

Sanjeev Mohindra is a passionate blogger and technology enthusiast who currently blogs at Techkle.com. He has successfully created many blog and sold them with profit. You can follow him at @techkle.